Wireless Sensor Networks for Home Health Care
Summary (1 min read)
Introduction
- Various economic and technological factors (e.g. Moore’s Law) have brought sophisticated electronics within the reach of average users.
- One important benefit is to help stem rising health care costs by increasing health observability and doctor-topatient efficiency.
- More specifically, this paper will discuss several of these projects, highlighting their need, design, implementation, and results.
- Demonstrate working prototypes with relatively simple technology which make incremental, but important, steps to toward ubiquitous deployment of health monitoring devices, as well as how they may be integrated into existing infrastructures.
II. TECHNOLOGIES
- The authors prototypes use two similar sensor network mote technologies: Tmote Sky and SHIMMER.
- The Tmote Sky is the latest derivative of the Berkeley Telos motes from Moteiv Corp. [1].
- The other mote is Intel’s Digital Health Group’s platform for Sensing Health with Intelligence, Modularity, Mobility, and Experimental Re-usability, or SHIMMER.
- Both are nearly identical with respect to processing and communication; each have the Chipcon CC2420 802.15.4 radio and TI MSP430 (with 10k RAM).
III. PROTOTYPES
- The authors have developed several prototypes which demonstrate wireless sensor network technologies for heath care at home.
- Each of these prototypes will be discussed in the following sections.
E. LISTSENse
- If people with a severe hearing impairment are included with those who are deaf, then the number is 4 to 10 times higher.
- At least half of these people reported their hearing loss after 64 years of age [9].
- The deployment of mote technology further reduces the cost of their prototype.
- Once the measured signal surpasses the reference value, an encrypted activation message is sent to the Base Station that incorporates the Transmitter address.
- Figures 5(b) and 5(c) shows the manufactured Base Station and Transmitter prototype that were successfully tested and evaluated.
IV. DISCUSSION
- Sophisticated, low-power, cheap, small, and mobile electronics will continue to permeate the home environment for a variety of applications, ranging from multi-media entertainment to home automation.
- Therefore, this figure shows that hospital costs will rise sharply and health-care at home is one way of alleviating this problem.
- Several technologies will be important to this evolution: sensor networks, RFID, and mobile consumer electronics.
- Software may be deployed on these devices to remind patients of their responsibilities (e.g. taking their pills and how much to take) and performing real-time analysis of patient data, given parameters set by their physician.
V. CONCLUSION
- Falling electronics prices and their increasing power, coupled with sensing technologies, promise to make health monitoring in one’s home, rather than frequent trips to the hospital, a reality.
- These prototypes represent incremental, but important steps towards ubiquitous deployment of health monitoring devices for the betterment of human lives.
Did you find this useful? Give us your feedback
Citations
133 citations
126 citations
124 citations
Cites background from "Wireless Sensor Networks for Home H..."
...[112] described wireless sensor network prototypes for home healthcare....
[...]
105 citations
102 citations
Cites background or methods from "Wireless Sensor Networks for Home H..."
...The increased health observability and communication efficiency of WSN-SHHS is also expected to help stem rising healthcare costs [5], [6]....
[...]
...A variety of WSN-SHHS has been recently developed to address these two significant problems, such as a WSN-based fall detection system and wearable smart shirt [5]....
[...]
...Patients who are more willing to stay at home [5], especially elderly patients, could save money, time, and effort via the use of WSN-SHHS....
[...]
..., [3], [5], [6], [38]), but has overlooked the issue of adoption by users....
[...]
...The real-time data and communication will allow them to be interpreted in the context of a patient’s specific condition and increase early detection of adverse conditions and diseases for risky patients, potentially saving more lives [5]....
[...]